JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

Hot damn the Hong Kong rugby team is really good. Final score at their practice match against the Philippine team at IS Manila yesterday: 64-7. Often the score line is not a clear indicator of how the game went; in this case it looked like 64-7.

The Hong Kong team warming up. See the little guy in the middle? It’s the half-Filipino number 9 or 10, Keith Robertson. Heee’s goood.

This is the Philippine Volcanoes squad for the test match vs. Hong Kong. Lots of new guys, especially in the forward positions.

The practice match was divided into 20-minute quarters. In each quarter Coach Expo Mejia fielded a different combination of players, sending in the “best” team last. The final lineup will be announced tomorrow.

(Please excuse the shaking, I hadn’t intended to shoot video but since I was watching the game with the optical zoom anyway I figured I’d record parts of it.)

Mr Saunders father of Oliver (playing)-Matt (recovering from injury)-Ben (playing in Australia) notes that the Volcanoes won the last quarter 7 points to 5 and this was due largely to the change in tactics and the fact that Coach put on some of our more experienced players. If we can replicate that for the entire game on Saturday we could walk away the winners.

My friend Kermit put it in mathematical terms (Go Geeks Watching Jocks!): The Hong Kong team has a super-efficient swarm algorithm. They’re like a hive mind, or the Borg. When the ball carrier moves forward, everyone knows where to go so that when he gets jumped, there is always a teammate near him to retrieve the ball, and when that teammate gets jumped another teammate gets the ball.

Think of a swarm of bats emerging from a cave, or a flock of migratory birds. When the leader veers, the others instinctively follow, spreading out but moving in the same direction. The leader’s intention is propagated throughout the swarm: they know what he’s planning to do and they take their rightful positions.

In contrast, the Philippine team kept losing possession—whenever the ball-carrier got tackled he did not have many passing options. Maybe they couldn’t read each other yet, having just started playing together? It looked like a demonstration of chaos theory.

Chaos is the operative word; the rise of the Philippine Volcanoes has been both unpredictable and improbable. This was a no-bearing practice match after all; we expect something else at the test match on Saturday.

Hong Kong may have the awesome swarm algorithm of bats, but they’re not Batman.

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Go Moms of Philippine Volcanoes!

Mrs Zappia with her sons Rafael and Rupert

Mrs. Letts with her sons, Michael and Jake.

L-R: Rupert Zappia, Jake Letts, Ned Stephenson, Chris Everingham. This was supposed to be a serious photo, hence Chris Everingham’s expression. However Rupert noted that we have not posted a picture of him kissing Jake. For some reason Ned Stephenson looks like Josh Brolin in this shot.